Sort of continuing on from my post yesterday, we're seeing each story hit its high point, its climax. I teach a very simple way of understanding narrative to my classes, called "Freytag's Pyramid." It's a very basic tool for thinking through narrative, but quite effective. These newspaper strip styled comics are adhering to the pyramid quite nicely. These climactic moments are presented in a nice array of styles, from Superman's figuring out of his dilemma to the Flash's maddening skipping through time and dimensions. The climax is the highest emotional point in a story. So how is it that a story told in single pages across 12 weeks can have such a thing? Is there not something to the sense of immediacy a climax has when one is reading a novel or a short story? What if you had to read the story in chunks of predetermined length? Would that affect your enjoyment of the climax when you reached it?
I think I might be talking nonsense today. But that's fine - I've given the ol' brain a few weeks off.
To be continued.
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